To Eat a Continent Is Not So Strange1
Waves could wash away certain blue memories but they're too blue. Today I've sat in two places, my heart full of you and how in the night under a half man in the moon too soon, too soon, did love die? Today I've sat in two watery places but the rhythms will never wash away the face and smell and voice of you. Thus, I stand in the sun, like that, the breeze gently tears my beard and life becomes death.No, no, not that. A boat being repaired in a boatyard. And think of it! people on the planet earth! And nothing, but nothing, not even tao, is permanent. Whereas for as my dear this is a disadvantage, since I wished to be permanently a member of your arms, for me the individual I do not disappear as long as there is change. Life is like all things that are forever changing but will always remain the same. love is one of those things.
From hitch-hiking, as the sun descends I proclaim this, the mystery more powerful than the handshake. Thus, even unto children I have kept my silence, and even unto to you I will. The white birch bending over the river fell in. It carried downstream and in one tidle sweep became a great white fish. When the sea dried up this unlucky fish grew wings anyway and became the great bird. The heavens were too small and it shattered into bits like you and I. A fable.
To say I love you until the house falls down. Beyond the row of houses lit by street lamps and into the night I go, with and without you, both. how is it the powerful night attends you like a magician his queen? The way the sun would climb into a bottle to please me.
2
Under a full night of black night stars, shooting and shining, turning a world of sun worlds, everything universe and cool wind, mountains of dark sound and a stream's breath song, I think often, until dawn, of your strong love. All of these true things becoming mine as a shore. And we inside as a breath baby. Listen, life darling long, four horses grazed nearby my head last night, like good luck. Struck thus I write: your love is greater than the real celestial globe.Something thicker and velvet than deep sea foam for you swirl lover. Something true to the events of our lives, the clear mountainous horizon of vision. Over the vast green earth O population of human and animal lovers to chewing very cud, our bond is fulfilled as a mother. A tremendous earthquake coudn't exist without us.
Robert Ronnow
Absolutely Smooth Mustard
There is absolutely nothing to do. Some people
fall in love. I go have a cheese sandwich
with mustard. Watch skyscraper lights from
the bed. Look at the books and decide to read
none of the dry words. The cheese sandwich is
good, and orange juice. It's cold in the kitchen
so I go back to bed even though it's Spring.Some people go dancing in fish net stockings.
They find a good time--but exactly what this means--
it's not more important than a star. Quite
what is this waiting. Tonight I could disappear
and the world might not miss me until next year.
I remember passionate nights with some of the women
I've known. Two sides of a smooth stone.Robert Ronnow
Peaches
Wherever peaches grow I go and pick 'em.
When they get ripe I try and swipe 'em.
The farmer runs out with a shotgun and wonders where's the varmint gone?
I'm hiding by the railroad tracks stacking the peaches I've found.Then a freight train about a mile long rolls by hauling a bucket of rain.
I hop aboard while beautiful clouds gather to the north.
I put my peaches in the bucket and lug it to a hidden part of the train.
The rain begins, the night looms in, it's summer and it's thoughts and warm.To the clacking rumble and the patter I close my eyes and dream.
An earthquake swallows up the people who wear horrible masks of fright as their daily tasks are trampled.
In a favorite movie theater an illumined lady puts her hand in mine, warm mouths, breath, skin, hair wing-soft, whole bodies, wind, bare.
I open my eyes at sunrise there's a steady glow of light around.If you believe in God, you can believe the mountains go from purple to green.
While the last partier meanders home to bed the first farmer is up to milk his bread.
Fruit of the world ripens audibly and cities make a silent, distant sound.
Kind of a lonely guy stretches, rubs his eyes, pees out a passing train, has a breakfast of peaches and rainwater.Robert Ronnow
The Cedar Knot
No wonder the old folks
call it fat wood.
The colors are warm,
red shading to pink
even orange high lights,
the brown of my mother's hair.
The smell offers hints
of another life,
a linen chest,
my uncle's hands whittling
under his slow voice.
It's easy to love
winter in rooms
where the grandmother dozes,
her windows so tall
behind us they shape
the gray december sky.
I read with her,
she taking what I brought--
at nine Nancy Drew
later Vanity Fair,
her grammar school
at last completed
in her seventies.2
This small piece I dream
over is shaped
like a flying saucer.
Wet black bark fits like a lid.
I know it means to move.
My mother flew in
at five drain-faced
from the office, zipped
to the kitchen to do
what I should have done
so fast no one
could help her.
I wept for her
and could not move.3
A gray fence post I hit
in a game of tag gave me
this star-like scar
over the pulse in my wrist.
When the doctor pulled
the stick out we saw,
with the respect saved
for royalty,
it was cedar.
Rich enough to make
soupstock, it came down
to us from thin ridges,
primitive and strong,
to that satin turning
in workingman's hands.
Our mild lives steeped
in the brilliance of sunset
and evergreen
as the fire we sat by
leaped and reddened the walls.Peggy Steele
Jellyfish
in Newport Harbor. Slack as crepe,
they drift in the slug-colored light
they emulate. Tourists flock
through seasonal boutiques and taverns
along the dock above. On all fours,
I stare through a jellyfish,
and catch repeated and receding
in pair after pair of mirrors
more lives than the illustrated Man
explained with his shameless skin.In the rasp of human voices,
the jellyfish are punctuation
for the harbor's delicate silence.
They live on nothing. They drift
and sigh; a slight contraction
of the entire livid blot
suffices to direct them
from one dark sounding to the next.
If a child fell they'd sting him
to death: there are that manyFrom every blob decends a tail
to force that sting of knowledge--
the crux of intelligence the cream
of breaking seas. In the slop
of rain in the outer harbor,
racing yachts frisk at twelve knots,
gentlemanly enough these days
of hydroplanes and whirlwind romance.Staring over the anchorage spiked
with aluminium masts, the city's
eighteenth century wooden houses--
restored in authentic colors--
snag the weakening Sunday light
and vitalize it slightly;
enough at least to rouse the drinkers
in blond-wood bars with disciplined plants
to another round of Bloodies.I'd count myself among them,
but I'm stalled face-first on foot
above the skulking jellyfish--
which mimic the ghosts of Astors
and Vanderbilts: those who arrived
too late and died too young of stroke
or typhoid; their watering hole
poisoned by jellyfish, by gilt
on the waters of dawn seen bleaching
from the loggia of the Breakers--
where the shame of being too rich
accentuated the agony
of the Commodore paralyzed
three years in his west-facing bedroom.The jellyfish, like Lovecraft's
Dunwich nightingales, have captured
certain vulnerable souls and fed
deeply till they've merged. They form
cartoon speech balloons--strangely
empty, strangely eager to fill
with the innocent gasps of tourists
as they sip gin and tonic above
in their Lily frocks and Izod
shirts: their tan faces blanching
in the sullen gray, their tempers
gnarled and warped by the savagery
done since the Commoddore's time
to the dollar.I'm alone
on the lower level, no one
sees me touch a jellyfish
as it bobs on the scummy drink:
its transparency the foil
to my own perverse opacity;
its empty welcome to speech
that of a living sheet of paper
upon which lies and noms-de-plume
disappear instantly in shame,
and leave the innocent flesh
forever cleaner than water.Water forgives us such language
only when we drown ourselves,
like Shelley; or, like the Commodore,
turn from it in gaudy illness
after having spent enough money
to purge ourselves of common blood.The jellyfish gloat in thousands
like the cells of a single brain:
the accumulated knowledge
of the sea expressed in a calm
of possibilities; the cream
of a few breaking crests offshore
the only expression of haste
this side of the human; as if,
without some great irruption,
heroes I'd once dismissed as dead
had gently begun to snore.William Doreski
